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Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

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Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#51

Post by smt88 »

bsder wrote: post #50

I'd be happy if they just spec'd a 2mW WiFi, thanks. The fact that I can see my neighbor's WiFi is actually a hindrance, not a benefit, nowadays.

Increasing WiFi range doesn't mean much for most consumers, but it's hugely important for deploying WiFi to large public spaces (city streets, offices, parks, etc.)

(On an unrelated note, the fact that you can see your neighbor's WiFi seems like one of the smallest imaginable hindrances and a terrible reason to reconsider WiFi innovation goals.)

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#52

Post by Gibbon1 »

mwsherman wrote: post #43

This is about minimizing power-per-range, not maximizing range itself. IoT devices have very local utility, one assumes. I do like the idea of regular laptop-and-tablet Wifi having better range. But in dense environments, that might be an anti-feature: more interference from more (distant) neighbors. Suburban/rural might be the best use case.

I more would like the idea of laptops and smartphones being able to talk directly with low cost smart home stuff like your thermostat without having to have bridges or pay someone for access through some 'your data is now our data not yours' cloud services

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#53

Post by hodwik »

bsder wrote: post #49
blhack wrote: post #10

There used to be a good wikipedia article about LoraWan, which is better than this (for IoT) in just about every way, but it has been replaced with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN LoraWan consumes power at a similar rate that BLE does, except it has a 20km range. You're talking about months (or even years, depending on your interval) of usefulness out of a CR2032 coincell battery. Sidenote: the removal of…

Except that I can't buy it, it doesn't seem to have a stack, and doesn't have any open implementations to examine. But, other than that, LoraWan is better. Uh, yeah. Come back when LoraWan is shipping something other than vapor.

So Sematech and Tata's LoraWan plan in India is vaporware? They claimed successful tests, and said their network is open to testing end-to-end by IoT developers.

This is a serious question, I just moved most of my stock portfolio into Sematech after that news. If Sematech's LoraWan is real, this is the best pureplay futurist stock I've seen since Tobii.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#54

Post by Gibbon1 »

bsder wrote: post #50

I'd be happy if they just spec'd a 2mW WiFi, thanks. The fact that I can see my neighbor's WiFi is actually a hindrance, not a benefit, nowadays.

I'm somewhat concerned about LoRa and things like it for that reason. Having a transmitter emitting energy in your band is bad. But having a bunch of transmitters emitting coherent energy you're receiver can detect it worse. The former just cuts down your signal to noise. The latter directly limits your available bandwidth. Which is to say, if your radio detects the beginning of a weak packet from far away it's locked down for the duration. Can't transmit, can't receive another stronger packet that arrives slightly later.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#55

Post by hodwik »

bravo22 wrote: post #41
blhack wrote: post #10

There used to be a good wikipedia article about LoraWan, which is better than this (for IoT) in just about every way, but it has been replaced with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN LoraWan consumes power at a similar rate that BLE does, except it has a 20km range. You're talking about months (or even years, depending on your interval) of usefulness out of a CR2032 coincell battery. Sidenote: the removal of…

LoRa has long range but throughputs is extremely low. It is useful for some applications but not for all.

For most sensors throughput is not the problem -- it's distance, and power consumption.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#56

Post by hodwik »

tommoor wrote: post #26
blhack wrote: post #10

There used to be a good wikipedia article about LoraWan, which is better than this (for IoT) in just about every way, but it has been replaced with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN LoraWan consumes power at a similar rate that BLE does, except it has a 20km range. You're talking about months (or even years, depending on your interval) of usefulness out of a CR2032 coincell battery. Sidenote: the removal of…

LoraWan is super interesting for IOT but as far as I understand it acts more like a traditional radio transmitter? Great for collecting data from lots of discrete sensors but less for bi-directional data transfer

It's bidirectional, that's the whole point. If it was unidirectional it would be no better than standard radio.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#57

Post by nitrogen »

MBCook wrote: post #48
abrookewood wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we really downvoting xkcd? I don't see anything wrong with a little bit of humour on HN.

That comic is a trope at this point. Any discussion of standards includes it. The comment didn't add anything. If it was a more substantive comment and mentioned the comic you'd have a point. But the comment might as well be a copy and paste job. It's not really adding to the discussion. I mean just from the discussion and the letters XKCD I knew which comic it was.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#58

Post by tilect1 »

rblatz wrote: post #36
Kadin wrote: post #9

It looks neat, but it's hard not to be cynical about yet another competing standard for low-power "smart home" / IoT-type devices, just to muddy the ZigBee vs. Z-Wave vs. BT LE Longrange vs. conventional WiFi waters a bit more. Not saying there's anything wrong with the protocol per se; it's probably perfectly fine. But the lack of widespread standardization in the 900MHz ISM low power space is really crippling what…

I agree, the wink hub already ships with something like 5 different radios. Also this doesn't look like it supports mesh networking. What advantages does it offer over z-wave or zigbee? And will it be better than Insteon's or Lurton's protocols?

LoRa mesh networking, not too many details but it appears to be possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdejQkTdC6o

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#59

Post by hodwik2 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #54
bsder wrote: post #50

I'd be happy if they just spec'd a 2mW WiFi, thanks. The fact that I can see my neighbor's WiFi is actually a hindrance, not a benefit, nowadays.

I'm somewhat concerned about LoRa and things like it for that reason. Having a transmitter emitting energy in your band is bad. But having a bunch of transmitters emitting coherent energy you're receiver can detect it worse. The former just cuts down your signal to noise. The latter directly limits your available bandwidth. Which is to say, if your radio detects the beginning of a weak packet from far away it's locke…

LoraWan is inherently monolithic. There is only supposed to be one LoraWan provider, who acts as the router, and passes traffic to receiver according to their address -- just like a cell tower. You don't have a hundred cell towers, you have 3.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

#60

Post by trollian »

Kadin wrote: post #9

It looks neat, but it's hard not to be cynical about yet another competing standard for low-power "smart home" / IoT-type devices, just to muddy the ZigBee vs. Z-Wave vs. BT LE Longrange vs. conventional WiFi waters a bit more. Not saying there's anything wrong with the protocol per se; it's probably perfectly fine. But the lack of widespread standardization in the 900MHz ISM low power space is really crippling what…

Zigbee is fairly awful. Most of that space wasn't designed for consumer products or multi vendor interoperability.

Being able to use the standard WiFi software & firmware stack but trading throughput for lower power and greater range has the potential to be a huge win. There are already many players who have WiFi silicon that it should be easy to adapt to this new protocol. Hopefully that will mean wide availability of solutions at competitive prices.

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